Deputy`s Bosses At Fault, Rape Victim`s Suit Claims

May 31, 1985|By William Presecky.

Du Page County officials were negligent in hiring and supervising a deputy sheriff who raped and stabbed a suburban West Chicago woman in 1981 after disabling her with an electronic stun gun, the woman`s lawyer argued Thursday.

Attorney Robert Jones of Wheaton told Judge Anthony Peccarelli in Du Page County Circuit Court in Wheaton that the officials should be held liable for damages.

A suit filed by Jones in 1981 on behalf of the 19-year-old woman seeks $2 million from Du Page County, Sheriff Richard Doria, the sheriff`s merit commission and Richard Schramm, the former deputy who was convicted of rape.

Itasca attorney James Schirott, representing the county defendants, argued that they were not responsible for Schramm`s off-duty activity. No one could have predicted that he was capable of such a vicious attack, Schirott said.

Schirott is seeking a summary judgment to dismiss Doria, the commission and the county from the lawsuit. Peccarelli took the case under advisement after hearing brief arguments on Schirott`s motion.

Under questioning from Peccarelli, Jones conceded that there are no Illinois cases that deal specifically with the responsibility of the sheriff`s merit commission.

But in court documents filed in support of his argument that the county officials should remain in the suit, Jones cited reports indicating that Schramm had been rejected for employment by the West Chicago and Lombard police departments before being hired by the county.

Schirott said Schramm`s failure to be hired in those communities was unrelated to any finding that he was capable of antisocial behavior.

Schramm, 41, began serving a nine-year sentence in the Sheridan Correctional Center in June, 1982, after he pleaded guilty to the July 22, 1981, rape and deviate sexual assault of the woman.

Schramm had been indicted in August, 1981, on charges of rape, attempted murder, deviate sexual assault, armed violence and kidnaping in connection with the rapes of two west suburban women. He was acquitted of charges in one of the rapes.

The West Chicago woman who filed the damage suit said she had been walking her dog near the Illinois Prairie Path, near West Chicago, when Schramm shot her with a stun gun, raped her and then stabbed her in the back. She take a submachine gun into the sheriff`s department.

Court records indicate that just days before the attack on the woman, Schramm showed a stun gun to two fellow deputies and said the gun, which can temporarily disable a person, would be a perfect weapon in the hands of a rapist. The conversation was not reported by the deputies until after Schramm was arrested in connection with the rape, Jones said.

Shortly after Schramm`s arrest in 1981, Doria described Schramm`s performance evaluations from the time he was hired in 1976 as ``consistently high.``